Character: Shadey Lin
Prompt:
This part of the cave looks older than the rest. In rustic dye, you encounter a crude depiction of Coursers unlike any you’ve ever seen before, their oddly-proportioned bodies running in a herd along the wall. Who could have made this? How does it make you feel?

Word count: 199 words

Shadey Lin looked up at the long wall. The light of the lantern strapped around his neck casts an orange glow over the various paintings on the wall. In the paintings, horses in all shapes and sizes are depicted, each unique to one another and displaying a different pose.

Shadey looked in awe. Something like this he had never seen before. How were those able to be made? And who made them? How long have they been here, hidden from the surface, their history never told, only shown in these artistic ways.

It gave Shadey a feeling he couldn’t quite place. He slowly walked along the wall, taking in each and every one of the figurines. Coursers, but none he recognized. The displayed herd reached all across the wall. A canvas to an artist that once threaded these very steps.

A pang of loneliness shot through Shadey’s chest. These Coursers were all depicted together, friends, family, maybe war companions of dungeon companions. Shadey wondered if the artist had felt alone when he painted this. Did he get help drawing the Coursers on the wall? Or did he weep knowing that it’d never be him? Would it ever be Shadey?